


we lived at eighteen

by criminallobster



Series: dnf oneshots [1]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Awkward Flirting, Best Friends, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Hurt No Comfort, I'm Sorry, Idiots in Love, M/M, Memories, Post-Break Up, Reminiscing, Road Trips, Teenagers, and yes it's going to be sad, i may or may not have had an emotional breakdown writing this, yes they broke up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-16 20:42:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29706315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/criminallobster/pseuds/criminallobster
Summary: It was hard today. Harder than usual. Usually, he could just push the rumbling ocean of emotions away. Today, it threatened to burst.Today, he sank.(Or, Dream reminisces about the road trip he took the summer he was eighteen.)
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Series: dnf oneshots [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2183142
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	we lived at eighteen

**Author's Note:**

> before we begin, i'm aware that roadtrip is a personal song to dream, and that's part of the reason why i was so hesitant to post this fic. this is in no way meant to be disrespectful to dream, and obviously if he says that he's uncomfortable with his song being used in fanfics, this will be taken down immediately. please don't comment hate on this. if you don't feel like roadtrip should be connected to dnf, just don't read it. no need to spread hate.

It was hard today. Harder than usual. Usually, he could just push the rumbling ocean of emotions away. Today, it threatened to burst.

Today, he sank.

_Twenty hours in an old van._

Three years. That's how long it's been since the day we sat together in that van. Feels like longer, though. Time doesn't fly when you're stuck in the past.

I still have that van. It's sitting in my garage. I can't drive it. It hurts every time I try to, like a punch to my stomach, even now. I haven't touched it since that weekend. Screw it, I haven't even been to my garage since a couple of months ago. I can't bear to look at it anymore. Every time I do, it's like it's happening all over again, the ghosts of our past haunting me.

_Up the east coast, through the cold wind._

We were so innocent. Just kids, really. We’d been sitting on the top of the van, my heart pounding as you looked into my eyes. You’d taken my hand, hopped off, ran off to god knows where. And I’d followed you. You’d led me to this little area, not even a beach, just a small patch of sand next to the ocean. The sun had been setting, the stars painting the Stygian night sky like a sparkling chandelier on a melancholy backdrop, so full of hope. So alive.

Then I’d turned to look at you, and I saw your eyes flick down to my lips for the smallest fraction of a second, and I knew what you were thinking. I was thinking it too. And you’d leaned in, and I did too, without a doubt or worry in the world, because isn’t that what you do when you’re young? You take risks, you make impulsive choices, and you jump. You jump, knowing you could fall.

And all you can do is hope that you fall into the right arms.

_Drove twenty hours by the ocean._

The waves of teenage infatuation, blissful desire, crashing into each other.

A glint in your eye, a fond smile, and just like that, I was in love.

I was so in love. I mean, I don’t think I can do that again. To love like that, to give my whole, entire heart to someone, let them do with it whatever they want. Dumb of me, really, but hey, we were eighteen.

I’d given you my hoodie, too. We had been just sitting there, comfortable silence passing. I’d noticed you were shivering, so I’d taken my hoodie off and gave it to you. It was a bright green hoodie, fitted to my body but oversized on yours, and I’d drawn this stupid little lopsided smiley face on it earlier. You put it on, though, and I was speechless, just sitting there thinking _how could anyone be this perfect?_

And I remember accidentally saying it out loud, and you giving me this incredulous look, saying you weren’t, that you were far from it. That I had to be joking.

I wasn’t, though. You were perfect to me.

You _are_ perfect to me.

Yet I’ll never be enough for you.

_Up the east coast, what a road trip._

We’d spent the rest of that road trip just like that. You’d reach out to me, hold my hand while I was driving on the highway, and I’d take it, your cold skin pressing up against mine. Your hand had fit so well in mine, like two puzzle pieces, made to be slotted together, to be _one._ During the gas stops, I’d look into your eyes, and every time, _every time,_ there would be that look there, the one that said _you are my everything._ The look that would pull me into the warmth of your love, and then all of the sudden your lips would be on mine again, your fingers running through my hair, my hands thrown across your shoulders and yours on my back, perfectly content just sitting there, kissing like the only thing that mattered in the whole entire world was _us._ Like _I_ was the only one that mattered.

You’re still the only thing that matters to me, the only one I’d walk to the ends of the universe to be with. I think you know that, though, don’t you? I just don’t mean the same to you.

Not anymore.

_Now that interstate is paved with memories._

Those memories float around in my head sometimes, like snapshots of our time together. They’re like polaroids. So vivid, so fresh when you take them. And you promise yourself that you won’t let them fade, but eventually, they all do. Some of them are more faded, some less. I can still make out a lot of the details on most of them, I can still remember the things that happened during that trip, the things I felt. But some of them are jaded, colors seeped out by the passage of time, happiness drained out of us like we were a sponge, our wondrous, innocent love squeezed out by the cruelties of the real world, where puppy love doesn’t conquer all, where pain is all that there is, and there is no happily ever after. We were twisted, turned, morphed until we were something else, and then nothing at all.

_Of a past life I lived when I was eighteen._

I remember, though. I remember that stupid song you heard on the radio, the one you loved so much that you wrote down the lyrics and looked it up later. We’d driven down the freeway screaming the chorus on the top of our lungs. Stupid, stupid unconfessed love in the air, stupid, stupid irresponsible decisions to be made.

That’s all in the past now, isn’t it? A past life we lived, people we used to be. But we aren’t those people anymore. We’ve... grown up. Time flew by, and all of the sudden I’m twenty-one and nothing’s the same, but I still crave it.

_And evеry winter, I think back to what we used to bе._

I want to feel.

I want to feel what it’s like to love again, but I don’t think I can. I think that part of me is lost forever now, stolen by time, burned up alongside whatever it was we had that summer.

The summer we were eighteen.

I’d been confident that you were the one. That we'd grow old together, somewhere in the countryside, maybe. That we’d be together forever, that we could fight it all, that you’d wrap your arms around me on the hard days and then everything would be alright and that we, being the stupid teenagers we were, could do anything.

_In that past life, we lived at eighteen._

It hurts, but at least we lived.

* * *

Maybe it was time.

He started the engine. Still works, somehow.

_Some things never die._

He backed out of his garage, not really having a destination. Just driving wherever it took him.

It took him to the beach, to _their spot._

And so he complied. Parked the car just inside the entrance road, concealed enough that someone just driving along the highway could miss it but painfully obvious to anyone who was looking for the spot.

He walked home, heart lighter yet so, _so_ heavy.

* * *

He returned a week later, just to see if someone took it.

It was gone.

In its place laid a lime green hoodie, the smiley face faded like the bright colors of their love. It didn't matter, though.

After all, why should it, if the person he loved was colorblind?


End file.
